Emergency Management - Fall 2008 - (Page 30)

How it Works The following illustration depicts how the fish monitoring system works to detect contaminants that may be in the water. SOURCE: INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION CORP. Signals from eight ﬁsh are transmitted using noncontact, passive electrodes to the IAC 1090 ampliﬁer system. The signals are ampliﬁed approximately 10,000 times before being relayed to the computer for analysis. Advanced software integrates ﬁsh behavior with data from a water multiprobe that tracks temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen. And So It Began Scientists at the U.S. Army Center for Environmental Health Research in Fort Detrick, Md., are known for doing much of the basic research on the bluegill, Lawler said. “They were the ones who started some of the early work monitoring water using bluegills. It was a real-time kind of thing where they would monitor and watch the reactions of the fish.” But even as early as 100 B.C., bluegills were placed in moats to monitor water, Lawler said, adding that he thinks a fair amount of municipalities use a more simplistic version of this technology. “They do it in a sense, not electronically monitoring,” he said. “In other words, if the fish floats, the water’s bad.” Tom Shedd, a research aquatic biologist at the Center for Environmental Health Research, and one of the scientists who helped create this system, noted the bluegill’s history. “Historically the fish have been shown to be a good indicator of toxicity in the water,” he said, “but the problem was how to digest that information, put it all together and get rapid information out.” That’s where IAC comes into play. The technology that San Francisco, New York, Fort Detrick and Washington, D.C., use today — the IAC 1090 Intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System — was developed in partnership with the U.S. Army. In October 2001, the Army began using the technology at Fort Detrick. That same year, IAC decided to commercialize it. The Army has a 30 patent on the technology and IAC purchased the license. It wasn’t until spring 2004 that Fort Detrick had an incident. “We never really found the issue,” Shedd said, “but the fish responded very aggressively, and we reacted to that appropriately.” Since then, there have been no incidents, but with the decline in the economy, Shedd said people will likely take more shortcuts with chemicals, increasing the chances of water contamination. “It’s just Tom Shedd talking, but with the downturn in the economy, a lot of people don’t do the right thing with toxic, industrial chemicals,” he said. “They have a tendency to find the easiest path to get rid of them — an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of thing. As the economy turns down, there just isn’t enough money to accomplish some of the environmentally relevant activities that you should be doing. I’m not saying it’s a bad world out there, but there are some things folks can justify based on where they are in their current financial situation.” IAC worked with the Army by taking its concept and automating it through the IAC software and some electronics experts, to make the system more portable and less expensive, Lawler said. To develop the software for the biomonitoring system, IAC developed a software model of a normal fish and how it reacts, and made that robust enough to account for the variations in water and fish, Lawler said. That software was then run in real time against the real fish and their reactions. How It Works The IAC 1090 Intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System works on the same principle as an electrocardiogram (EKG), Lawler said. “There are noncontact sensors in the water, so as the fish swim, breathe and cough, their movements are detected by the noncontact sensors,” he said, adding that those sensors are the same type of material found on an EKG machine. “In other words, any tiny movements your body produces or the fish produce generate a very tiny electrical signal that is detected by the sensors and then amplified.” The premise is that the system’s users have a broadband detection system in real time, Shedd said. “So what you’re monitoring is the fish’s ability to aspire — the respiration of the fish, if you want to call it that,” he said. “The changes in their breathing patterns are indicative of changes in their water, so it’s very helpful in detecting poisons in the water.” The time it takes for the fish to respond after a contaminant hits the water is about one hour, he said, adding that the “lethal concentration 50 parameter” is also a factor. “It’s a lethal concentration of material that causes 50 percent mortality,” Shedd said. “Let’s say someone put an organic material in the water of X concentration where 50 percent of your fish would die in four days. At that concentration of material,

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Emergency Management - Fall 2008

Emergency Management - Fall 2008 Contents Contributors Editor’s Letter In the Field Deep Freeze EM Bulletin Major Player In the News Uncharted Waters Bio-Sensing Bluegills Joint Accounts Education Directory Degress of Change Triage in 3-D Products Eric's Corner Last Word

Emergency Management - Fall 2008

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